Prince Harry, Meghan Markle. Shutterstock (2)
In his upcoming memoir Spare, Prince Harry penned an emotional passage about the days following wife Meghan Markle‘s miscarriage.
“We left the hospital with our unborn child. A tiny package. We went to a place, a secret place only we knew,” the Duke of Sussex, 38, wrote in an excerpt, which Us Weekly can exclusively reveal. “Under a spreading banyan tree, while Meg wept, I dug a hole with my hands and set the tiny package softly in the ground.”
The couple, who got married in 2018, first became parents when the Suits alum, 41, gave birth to son Archie in 2019. Following their decision to step back from their senior roles with the royal family, Harry and Meghan moved from the U.K. to California.
In November 2020, the Duchess of Sussex opened up about her pregnancy loss in an op-ed for The New York Times.
“After changing [Archie’s] diaper, I felt a sharp cramp. I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right,” she wrote, noting that her son was 18 months at the time. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second. … I felt the clamminess of [Harry’s] palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.”
Harry and Meghan offered a candid look at how they dealt with their loss while filming their Netflix docuseries.
“When I reveal things that are moments of vulnerability when it comes to having a miscarriage and maybe having felt ashamed about that, like, ‘It’s OK, you’re human. It’s OK to talk about that,’” the former actress, who welcomed daughter Lili in June 2021, explained in a December 2022 episode about the decision to go public with her miscarriage. “And I could make the choice to never talk about those things or I could make the choice to say, ‘With all the bad that comes with this, the good is being able to help other people.’ That’s the point of life, right? Is connection and community.”
Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, noted how proud she was of her daughter in the six-part series, adding, “I thought she was brave and courageous. But that doesn’t surprise me because she is brave and courageous.”
Spare will be released on Tuesday, January 10.